Any experience of Institut Marques, Barcelona

Hey all

Have just been to an appointment with my clinic to discuss possible egg donation and they link with Institut Marques, Barcelona. Results look impressive (70%) but the cost is huge, looking at 10K (ouch).

RE: Any experience of Institut Marques, Barcelona

Hi,
We traveled (from the UK) to the institute Marques twice, in May and and July for transfer and had first time success! M's is now 7 weeks pregnant with twins!

They are very kind and sympathetic with excellent email support and have English doctors working inc Rod, the laid back biker (though all the staff speak excellent English). The staff are very, very good - M's transfer was painless - in fact, first blood test I've had, where I didn't feel the needle go in!

Be aware of additional investigative tests which can incur more expense: for example a tesa (an extraction of sperm from the testicles - which I didn't have to have thankfully!! ) costs £1200 euros.

RE: Any experience of Institut Marques, Barcelona

Hi there

I've just signed up to this site. We are heading out to IM, Barcelona in early October for our initial consultation with them, having realised that the wait for a donor egg in the UK could be 12-18 months. As I am 45 we literally have no time to wait and we see this as our last chance saloon.

I would be really interested to hear about your progress Gracie. It's such a daunting experience isn't it?

We have just had treatment with Institute Marques. Firstly we were extremely happy with the staff that we met, all of the medical assistants are lovely and incredibly helpful, I could not fault them at all.

However, the clinic produced very poor quality embryos, out of 6, 3 arrested straight away and the 3 remaining were of very poor quality and heavily fragmented and not really viable for pregnancy. All the clinic have to say is that they cannot over test their donors, which I do understand, but they accept no responsibility for the poor quality of the eggs/embryos produced by their donor.

It appears that my husband and I have to bear the full cost of this poor outcome. We paid them 10,000 euros for good quality embryos and the chance of having a baby. We are obviously very upset but the fact that their donor and clinic did not produce good quality eggs/embryos is not our fault and I feel strongly we should not have to bear all of the responsibility and cost for this. We requested that the clinic offer us another treatment, but they have declined. They expressed their disappointment but basically it is just bad luck. Whilst they have their money and their large profit from the money we paid, my husband and I have nothing.

I'm sorry to read of your experience, something very similar happened to my DH and me last year. I want to tell you our story and maybe you can speak to them again about what has happened to you.

Our first cycle was back in November last year and we ended up with just one, average quality, embryo for implantation. We were obviously very disappointed with this as it is not what we expected at all. At the same time, the consultant wanted to carry out further tests on my DH's sperm to rule out any problem with his boys. It was an extremely emotional day, we were both very upset and poor DH had the indignity of having the quality of his sperm questioned when this was never an issue before. It was also very expensive as we had to pay about 700Euros for additional tests. I can't remember the name of them now but it was to check out his sperms' DNA.

Anyway, of course the cycle didn't work and it was a very long wait until the results of the sperm tests came back.

HOWEVER:

IM were absolutely fantastic with us, DH's sperm was perfectly fine (as we suspected) and IM were most apologetic for the disappointing cycle they offered us. We were offered a second cycle completely free of charge, this included all the drugs and I am happy to say we had great success second time around (with a different donor).

We saw Dr Plaza and his very words were 'we are doctors first and business men second' and he couldn't have been more apologetic.

It is always very difficult to accept that things can still go wrong with IVF, especially with a clinic such as IM which has such amazing success. Whilst we were beside ourselves at the time and not very happy with the way we were treated on the day, we did come to understand that IM wanted to rule out DH as a problem before being able to offer us any form of compensation.

Now, obviously, I don't know your personal circumstances but if you are unhappy I would really consider putting it all in writing to them (this is what we did) and taking the matter from there. I felt like you did at one point last year but in my eyes IM completely redeemed themselves (I know it's easy for me to say given I am now 29 weeks pregnant) but even if the second go had failed I would not have been able to hold IM accountable - second tx yielded 7 eggs, five top grade embryos, I had three put back and have two on ice.

I'm so sorry you are going through this, if it's any consolation at all I understand 100% how you are feeling at the moment, if I can help any further let me know.

Dear Gracie, thank you very much for your support and posting your experience.

My husband had already had all the relevant test, such as FISH which is the DNA test, prior to going to IM Barcelona. We had a different doctor to you. We have written to our doctor 3 times, last being yesterday. Each of his previous 2 replies discuss why the eggs/embryos were not good quality, but each time he closes his correspondence with the fact that all he can offer us is his sentiments. I am not expecting a positive outcome from my third email. It seems they are happy they did their best to get good quality eggs/embryos, this was not achieved and it was bad luck.

Well after 4 letters, Institute Marques still will not take responsibility for any part of the failing of this treatment. They basically expect me and my husband to bear the full financial responsibility for the appalling results of zero good quality embryos! We did nothing wrong but put all our trust in them, believing them to be one of the best clinics in Spain. So 10,000 euros later, the most expensive clinic in Spain have their profit, whilst we are left with nothing but a hole where our hearts are.

After all the stress and upset of having to write letter after letter after letter, they did finally offer for us to pay them more money for another treatment with a small discount (!!), this was put across as if they are actually doing us a favour. We have lost our trust in them completely and in all honesty, could not bring ourselves to pay them any more money.

At one point the Dr even tried to suggest that it was our fault because we had asked for blue eyes, saying, that was the reason why our donor did not have proven fertility. The most astonishing thing is, she never even had blue eyes!!

They have not even said sorry once!

We feel cheated, no where on their website, or the documentation they gave us to read and sign, does it prepare you for the fact that the treatment may end up with no good quality embryos at all. The only warning they give is the chance of multiple pregnancies.

I know Gracie your outcome was so much better and such a happy one and your experience, in the end, was good. Perhaps the change has come about since Dr Olivares has left the clinic. All I know is that we are so deeply hurt and disappointed, we expected so much more from what we believed to be such a good clinic.

I am due to travel to IM in Barcelona in November for one ET - Im 45 so fully aware the chances of success on the first attempt is slim. However I feel I will only have one attempt at this stage (perhaps naive)..?! Has anyone had recent experience there, or experiences they can tell me about. The cost has grown from the original I understood, to nearly 1000 pounds more with medications etc. Are there other hidden costs I am not yet aware of?

We had treatment there in October 13 and our 1 year old is .sleeping soundly as we speak! We had one attempt left, exhausted the British clinics and felt this was our last chance. I was 43! We had embryo donation because of our failures and only one go at this clinic! They were brilliant from start to finish with us, even sending us a pair of booties when our little man was born! I would recommend them and wish you every success xx I found their pricing average and upfront, never felt as though we had paid too much!